


Damsel in Distress

by birdzilla



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Humor, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 20:30:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8341663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdzilla/pseuds/birdzilla
Summary: Somehow Lance always finds himself in trouble. Fortunately, his friends are always there to get him out of it.





	1. the girl of the hour

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to [a prompt](https://voltron-kink.dreamwidth.org/1161.html?thread=80521#cmt80521) on the kink meme. The original prompt was, in part:
>
>> Face it, Lance is the damsel. Oh, he has the heroic moments - but they're usually paid off with bad stuff happening to him. And the longer the team stays together, the more they subconsciously start to realise that - and react to it.   
> ...  
> They don't coddle him exactly, but are aware that he has the worst luck in battle and he gets stupidly heroic and they need to make sure he doesn't get killed!
> 
> This work is almost entirely unedited from when it was originally posted on the kink meme; I sat on it for a while, but I realized how long it would take to rehaul it the way I wanted to, and decided to stick a fork in it instead and move on. I've separated it into chapters due to the episodic format. It does contain spoilers through episode six.

Lance was really killing it today. They'd swooped into a Galra mining base on an isolated moon, blown up all the important infrastructure, scooped up a bunch of prisoners being used as slave labor, and now? Now Lance was well on his way to making time with the cutest alien girl he'd seen yet.

(Not counting Nyma, but Lance preferred not to think about her if he could avoid it. Backstabbing was super unattractive, anyway.)

"Right in here," Lance said encouragingly, leading her into the armory. "We take the armor and bayards here when they need repairs. And there's some other weapons and stuff that they keep here, but Coran keeps it all locked up, and Hunk says just wanting to touch it isn't a good enough reason to fiddle with the locks for me."

"This is your armor?" the girl asked, the frills on her neck puffing up as she pressed a spindly finger to the forcefield over Lance's armor stand. "And the thing there, it is the weapon you used when your people took us from the base?"

"Yeah! It doesn't look that big, but it turns into a super badass gun," Lance said. "You wanna see?"

"May I?" she said, folding her hands together over her chest. Lance only took that as an excuse to stare at that area for a moment, honest.

Eager to please, he turned off the forcefield and picked up his bayard. "Go ahead and look. You want to see it as a gun? Pidge wants to do some diagnostics on it, but it's perfectly fine. I'd know if something was wrong with it."

At her nod, Lance expanded the bayard out into its full form, considerately pointing the barrel away from her. She reached out wordlessly to touch the barrel, her neck-frills quivering with excitement, and Lance was about to start pointing out the gun's features when she suddenly elbowed him, hard, in the chest, and snatched the bayard away.

She started to turn it about to bear on him, but as soon as it registered the change in handprint the bayard powered down. Shouting in anger, the girl swung the deactivated bayard wildly, smashing it into one of the cases of captured Galra weaponry that Lance had never convinced Hunk to unlock. The case shattered under the blow.

Dropping the bayard, she grabbed one of the Galra guns from the wreckage instead, and held it to Lance's head when he took a step towards her. "Don't move!"

Lance put his hands up. "Okay, okay, I'm not moving. What the hell?"

Instead of answering him, she jerked her head towards his waiting armor. "Helmet. Get the helmet. You talk into the helmet to the others, don't you? Tell them that you are my hostage. We will not be your prisoners too. They will let us go, or I will kill you."

"Wait, what? No, you've got it all wrong," Lance said. "You're not our prisoners, we're _going_ to let you go-"

She knocked him backward with the bulk of the gun, sending him stumbling up against the wall, then raised it back up to rest the barrel against his skull. "Tell them!"

Wincing, Lance stretched out his arm and wiggled to get a grip on the helmet. "Hang on, I'm calling them."

It didn't take long for Allura to talk the girl down, but by the time she'd been convinced that they really were friendly and she really didn't need to keep knocking dents into Lance's skull, the romance was well and truly dead.


	2. follow the shot

"That fighter is getting away," Keith said tensely over the comms in the midst of the battle. "It's way faster than the rest of them."

"It's got a different engine signature then the rest," Pidge added. "And it's headed straight out of here. I'd guess it's probably trying to get away with a sample from the station's labs."

Since they'd attacked the station in question based on a report that the Galra were experimenting with biological weaponry there, Lance didn't have to ask if that would be bad. He hammered through one more of the regular fighters, letting the Blue Lion shake it apart with her teeth, then swung her around to focus on the fleeing fighter.

"I've got a good angle on it," he reported. "It's way out there, but I think I can get it! Lining up a shot...."

The Blue Lion's tail swung up over her head, and Lance pulled back on the left control stick until their shot was lined up perfectly. A blue beam lanced towards the fighter and struck directly against the bulge of the extra engine in the back, wreathing the tiny ship in ice.

"Hah! Yes! Got it! Did you see that?" He threw the Blue Lion towards the crippled ship, powering up her mouth cannon to finish the job. "Don't worry, guys, I'll finish it off."

"Lance, its engines are redlining," Pidge said. "It's going to blow before you get there. Back off and let it take care of itself."

"With that kind of stuff on board? I'm gonna make sure," Lance said, refusing to alter his course. "We shouldn't be taking any chances."

"With that kind of stuff on board, Lance, if it blows up it's going to scatter those spores in a wide radius," Pidge said. "We know they're vacuum-resistant, and they'll end up all over the Blue Lion. You'll contaminate any place you land."

"Okay, never mind, turning around," Lance said, banking into a turn so hard that the inertia nearly threw him out of his seat sideways despite the safety harness.

"Turn around faster," Pidge said. "You're still in the projected blast zone, and you've got maybe five seconds."

"I'm going as fast as I can!"

There was a flash of motion on one of his side-screens, and then something struck his lion with a massive shudder of impact, metal clanging and screeching against metal. The extra velocity sent both him and his assailant sailing through space at a different angle, carrying him out of the blast zone just as the fighter blew. The sphere of flame and debris it created was astonishingly large, bigger than Lance would ever have credited, and he gaped at it for a second.

"We're clear," Shiro said. The Black and Blue Lions started disentangling from each other. "Lance, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Lance said, gasping for breath. "Thanks for the save."

"Any time," Shiro told him, then fired the Black Lion's jets and headed back towards the remaining Galra fighters. "Let's get back in the fight. And Lance?"

"Yeah?"

"Good shot."

In the privacy of his cockpit, Lance grinned to himself. "You too," he answered, before turning his attention back to the enemy.


	3. sacrificial lamb

This definitely wasn't Lance's fault. He told himself that repeatedly as he shuffled around in the rough stick-and-vine cage he'd been stuck in, trying to figure out how to make the other paladins believe it. He'd just stopped to help the little alien squirrel-thing get out of a trap; it wasn't his fault he'd fallen into an even bigger one.

Seriously, what kind of sickos used tiny innocent creatures in peril as bait?

"Oh, great sky god, turn your eyes upon us," the head alien said, waving all its tentacles at the sky. "We have found a suitable sacrifice, innocent and pure, kind of heart and simple of mind-"

"Hey!" Lance said, and one of the listening congregation turned to him and waved a tentacle in an angry shushing gesture.

"-and we ask that in exchange for this worthy servant, you send us your blessed rain once again!"

Behind him, a bunch of other tentacled aliens were throwing more wood onto an already considerable pile. A small fire burned nearby. Lance watched them and swallowed hard.

"Hey, you guys, look, I'm not that pure and innocent," he said to the nearest aliens. "I cheat at Go Fish, and I stole a girl's underwear once, and I have watched so much porn--hey, listen, I have _been to second base_ -"

A shadow fell over the gathering, and then Lance was drowned out by a low, rumbling roar and the shuddering of the ground all around them as the Yellow Lion landed hard on all four paws. She rose from a crouch and turned her head back and forth, eyes blazing, tail lashing, as the aliens scattered before her.

Lance scrambled to the front of the cage and reached out through the bars, waving frantically. "Hunk! I'm over here!"

He was really glad his attempt to persuade the aliens of his impureness hadn't gotten to the whole thing in the Garrison showers during orientation. Come to think of it, Hunk had more-or-less rescued him from that, too.


	4. home, on the range

Break days were the best days, as far as Lance was concerned. He understood why Allura and Shiro wanted to keep them training, he really did, but everyone worked better for having a day off now and then. And since 'now and then' was as frequent as they came under Shiro's training regimen, he cherished the few that they got.

"Ah! Lance! Just who I was looking for," Coran said.

Turning away from the kitchen counter, where Hunk was transferring his latest masterpiece from the Altaen thing that was definitely not, but just enough like, a stove to the Altaen thing that was definitely not, but just enough like, an oven, Lance smiled up at him. "Coran! What's up? Here to see the master chefs at work?"

Hunk, who had been doing all the work so far, chuckled as he slid the not-an-oven's door closed. "It's going to be done in twenty minutes, if you want to wait."

"Hmmm. Thank you, but no," Coran said. He put a hand on Lance's shoulder. "Since you paladins aren't doing team training today, I thought this would be a perfect time to get some one-on-one time in on the target range with your bayard! I'm an expert sharpshooter, you know. I expect I'll be able to give you plenty of tips."

"What? No way," Lance said, trying to wriggle out from Coran's grasp. The hand on his shoulder tightened, holding him in place with that inexorable Altaen strength. "This is a break day. That means no training. It's our day off!"

"This isn't physical training," Coran said. "Although I suppose you might break a sweat, if you _haven't_ been training with your bayard during your free training periods as much as we've advised."

(Lance had definitely not been training with his bayard during the free training periods as much as advised. The end-of-day 'free training period' meant 'pretend we're doing yoga, in the dark, with our eyes closed.' Even Keith knew that.)

"It's our day off," Lance protested again, and turned to Hunk for help. Hunk was his best friend, his number one bro; Hunk would help him out. "Besides, I'm helping Hunk cook. It's team-building! I can't abandon him in the middle of a project."

"There's nothing left to do but let it finish browning, and I can monitor the temperature on my own," Hunk said, the traitor. Lance was one hundred percent taking him off the guest list for the next sleepover. It could just be him and Pidge, watching an action movie on her laptop for once since Hunk wasn't there to get sick from the blurry motion shots. "I think target practice sounds fun. Once I've finished with this, I might join you."

(He totally wasn't going to join them, Lance could tell. He was disinvited from the next _three_ sleepovers.)

"Wonderful," Coran said, and began to pull on Lance's shoulder, forcing him to either walk or be dragged as Coran strode cheerily off towards the target range. "We'll get started without you. Come on, Lance, pick up those feet! You'll be taking out Galra from orbital range in no time."


	5. negotiable virtue

Forget all the others; _this_ alien chick was definitely the hottest girl Lance had ever met.

(Not counting Nyma and the crazy ex-prisoner girl, but, once again, Lance figured that backstabbing and/or hostage-taking took them off the hotness list.)

"Come on," she said, tugging on his hand and pointing deeper into the market. "The shop's right down there! It's not much farther. Let me show you the pendant, I think it would look great on you."

"I don't really have money," Lance said, fidgeting uncomfortably. "Shiro has all of ours, and he's not going to let me buy a pendant."

The alien girl grinned at him. Or at least, he was pretty sure it was her version of grinning, though the number of sharp and pointy teeth meant that it gave him some uncomfortable stomach flutters. Since they came along with a bunch of much more pleasant stomach flutters whenever she touched his skin, Lance was more than willing to tell the nervous flutters off for unjustified prejudice against shark-toothed aliens and keep talking to her anyway.

"Don't worry about it," she said, rubbing her thumb against the pulse-point on his wrist. Her touch was electric; Lance swallowed and hoped she couldn't read his blush. "If it looks the way I think it will on you, I'll buy it. I'm sure you can make it worth my while..."

Glancing back over his shoulder, Lance saw Shiro some distance away. He raised a hand and waved, and Shiro gave him a sharp look. "Stay in sight, Lance," he shouted back, repeating an earlier instruction that Lance kind of resented being singled out for. Just because the others hadn't told Shiro they were going off with girls didn't mean that they weren't just as likely to get into trouble as he was.

"I will," he yelled back anyway, shoulders hunched, and turned back to the girl. "Not much further, you said?"

All his irritation melted away as she pulled him forward, chattering eagerly about this bit of jewelry. At the door to the shop, Lance stopped, and she looked back at him in confusion.

"Wait, isn't it in the window or something?" Lance asked. "If I go in, I'm out of Shiro's sight."

"It's just for a moment," the girl urged, tugging on his wrist. "Come on, he's not even looking right now. We'll grab the pendant and come back out, and he won't ever know you went in."

Lance glanced over his shoulder. Just like she'd said, Shiro had his back to him, deep in conversation with some huge hulking alien that had bent nearly double to bring their heads level. And it really was super unfair that Shiro had made that rule just for him, anyway.

"Yeah, you're right, let's check it out," he told her, and was rewarded with another shark-mouthed smile.

Two hours later, when Shiro blew through the front door of what Lance was desperately praying wasn't an alien brothel, Lance found himself miserably grateful that Shiro hadn't decided to put the same line-of-sight restriction on all the other paladins. That would have required them to all come in with him, and Lance wanted as few people as possible to see him mostly naked and covered with elaborate shock-collar jewelry.


	6. hand-to-hand

"Okay, everyone, good work today," Shiro said, clapping his hands together. "Time for the free training period. One hour, and then you're all done."

"I'll go back there and do some yoga," Pidge said, jerking her head towards the door at the back of the gym where a few smaller rooms waited behind closed doors. "Hunk, you're coming, right?"

"Yeah. I've almost got the sun salute," Hunk said, sincerity pouring off him.

Shiro, who inevitably spent the free training period doing something or other with his arm that he was reluctant to inflict on the rest of them, nodded absently. He was already doing shoulder stretches.

"I think I'm gonna go with yoga too," Lance said, lacing his fingers together over his head and twisting a little to get a kink out of his back. "Keith, you coming?"

About half the time, Keith decided to pass on eyes-closed yoga in favor of actual training, so Lance wasn't surprised when he shook his head. He did a double-take, though, when Keith gestured to him. "No. Lance, stay here. We need to work on your hand-to-hand."

"What do you mean, _my_ hand-to-hand?" Lance said. "My hand-to-hand is fine. We spent an hour on hand-to-hand today. When has my hand-to-hand ever- is this about that thing with the alien jewelry shop?"

Pidge snorted.

"Look, they tricked me, okay? I'm not going to fall for the whole 'just try on this pendant' spiel again," Lance said. "I could've taken them all in a fair fight."

"We've been training for hand-to-hand as a group," Keith said, scowling and implacable. "You're not as good one-on-one. I want to work on that."

"I fight just fine one-on-one," Lance said, crossing his arms and glaring back. "Are you saying I'm bad at it? I don't have to take that from _you_ , I-"

One second Lance was upright and staring Keith down, and the next second he was on the floor, blinking, his knees and cheekbone still stinging from the hard landing.

A hand appeared in front of his face, and he looked up to see that Keith was holding it out, on one knee in front of him. Glaring at him, Lance ignored the hand and clambered to his feet. "That didn't count."

When he got to his feet, Shiro was looking at them thoughtfully, his arms crossed. "Lance, Keith is right. You do need to work on this, and he's the best person to teach you."

"But... yoga?"

"We can do yoga without you," Pidge said. "If you train with Keith, you might take marginally longer to capture next time."

Lance watched unhappily as his chances of an hour nap slipped from his grasp. Caught between Shiro and Keith, with no sympathy coming from his traitorous yoga buddies, there was no way he was going to get out of a hand-to-hand lesson. "Fine," he muttered, looking at Keith. "You've made your point. But let's go light on the knocking over."

"That depends on you," Keith said, shrugging. "We're going to start with basic combat stances."

As Pidge and Hunk walked away, making for the safety of the yoga room before they could get roped in, the penny finally dropped on Pidge's comment. "Wait, next time?"


	7. on a leash

"Has anyone found any signs of the temple?" Shiro asked over the comms.

His voice was staticky and distant, barely audible over the screeching of alien birds and instincts that filled the jungle around them. Two other crackling voices answered; Lance could just barely tell that one of them was Hunk, inaudible behind the noise.

"No, but ... interference is getting worse," Pidge said. "I think it's gonna ... until sunset."

"Lance," Shiro said through the static. "Status report?"

"I haven't seen anything but jungle," Lance said. "Lots and lots of hot, wet, muddy jungle."

Keith, voice distorted and tinny, broke in. "-found something. It's ... west, and there's ... look for the tower."

"Everyone, head west. We ... the temple," Shiro said, interrupted by a long burst of static in the middle. The order seemed clear enough despite it, so Lance confirmed he'd received it and started out westward.

Before he could tromp more than half a mile, though, looking vainly through gaps in the jungle canopy for signs of a tower, Keith's voice came over the comms again. "-Galra! At least-"

"Lance, status-" Shiro's question barely came through.

"I'm on my way!"

Even though the static, Lance could hear the sound of Galra guns in the background. He broke into a run, vaulting over fallen treetrunks and ducking a dangling vine. There was a tall rock directly in front of him, but it had a long, gentle slant; Lance sprinted up the side, leaving footprints in the moss that covered it, and jumped off the peak to land crouched amid the undergrowth beyond. Now he could hear the gunfire with his own ears, somewhere ahead of him but muffled by the trees, and he put on an extra burst of speed.

That was his downfall. Lance was in such a hurry to reach the temple and help Keith out that he stopped looking at the ground. A thorned branch caught at his elbow, he leaned just the slightest bit sideways, and then the tip of his right toe caught in a depression in the ground and he went sprawling. Muddy, annoyed, and frantic, Lance started to push himself to his feet, but as soon as he tried to put weight on his right foot his ankle went out under him and he fell with an embarrassing shriek.

He lay still for a long moment, heart pounding, as he envisioned a Galra patrol hearing the scream and coming to investigate. Once he was sure there was no one heading his way, though, Lance started to stand again, biting his tongue to keep more than a whimper from escaping when he bore down on his right foot. He made it two painful, hobbling steps before he landed in the mud again, unable to bear how much it hurt.

"Hey guys," he said into the helmet comm, his voice ragged. "I think I twisted my ankle. I can't walk."

There was a crackle of static, and then Shiro's voice. "-tight. We'll ... after we've ... temple."

Blinking back tears of embarrassment and pain, Lance resigned himself to sitting tight for quite a while. Science wasn't his strong point, but Coran had explained during the briefing how the nuon interference from this planet's sun interfered with Altaen technology. The lions could bear it, even if they had to be piloted in entirely on visual, but the castle had less shielding and was waiting for them well outside the solar system, where it couldn't do anything to help. Once they'd defeated the Galra, the other paladins would have to comb the jungle east of the temple pretty much by hand to find him, instead of relying on the castle's sensors. The search could take hours.

With that in mind, Lance really wasn't expecting the ring of faces looking down at him less than twenty minutes later.

"That was fast," he said, accepting Hunk's hand up. He threw his arm over Hunk's shoulders and leaned heavily on his friend, appreciating the way Hunk subtly took up even more of his weight with an arm around his waist. "Was I that close to the temple?"

"Not really," Pidge said, with the satisfied half-smirk she got when she was particularly pleased with something she'd done. "Hunk and I rigged up a tracker in your armor."

That made sense, Lance thought. The pair of them had probably fitted them all out. Though actually, it didn't make sense, unless he was missing something. "What about the nuon interference?"

"That's only messing with _Altaen_ technology. We made it out of the Earth tech we brought with us. The whole point was to be able to use it if the beacon already built into your armor was disabled."

"Cool," Lance said, hopping along one-legged as Hunk started to walk him back the way they'd come. "I didn't realize you had enough stuff with you to give us something like that. You didn't tear up anything important, did you?"

Pidge shrugged, still looking smug. "No. I prioritized."


	8. heavy artillery

"Tunnels again," Lance said. "I am getting really sick of tunnels. Are the Galra a burrowing species or something?"

"We've been in a lot of tunnels lately because we've been liberating a lot of mines," Pidge pointed out. "The Galra operate out in the open when they want something on the surface. But mines are mostly tunnels no matter who builds them."

"Does it sound weird that I'd rather fight like this in the tunnels than above ground?" Hunk asked. "Down here they can only come at us from so many directions at once. Above ground you never know which way to look to see if they're coming. And they can't get those fighters down here. I don't want to fight them outdoors unless I'm in my lion."

"Do you guys have any idea how loud you are?" Keith hissed over his shoulder. "You're echoing."

"Keith's right. Cut the chatter," Shiro said from the front of the group, and held up a hand to stop them all in their tracks.

He was at the mouth of the tunnel they'd come up, looking out at the cavern ahead. They all crowded up to peer around him, taking in the gloomy expanse.

"All the slaves are clustered at that end of the cavern," Pidge said, fiddling with the settings on her visor to examine the group. She prodded Lance aside to get a better view. "There's a few sentries around them, but most of them are staying around the mining machines."

"Our source said this was the only way in or out of the mine tunnels until the earthquake opened up that crack," Shiro said. "They probably aren't worried about the slaves running away, since they think they'll just be trapped in the tunnels. But if one of the slaves gets control of those big machines, then they'd be dangerous."

"Give me a few minutes with them and they'll definitely be dangerous," Pidge said, sounding frustrated as she dialed back the zoom on her visor.

Shiro put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, then let go and continued on. "Here's the plan. Lance, Hunk, you two lay down covering fire with your bayards while Keith and I hit the Galra hand-to-hand. Pidge, see if you can get those machines moving. If you can, put them between the Galra and the miners before you send them this way. If you can't do it fast, drop it and get the miners moving anyway. Our priority is to get them out of here. Once they're safe, we can come back with the lions and tear this place apart from overhead."

The plan was simple, but effective. It was going off without a hitch until most of the way through, when one of the Galra officers finally realized what the rampaging mining machines were hiding and directed most of his remaining force to charge after the escaping mine slaves.

"Guess he has the brains to realize we have another way out," Lance shouted at Hunk over the roar of combat filling the cavern. "I'm gonna go down and help them out. Cover me!"

Hopping down out of the mouth at the tunnel, Lance scrambled towards the miners and the Galra behind them, his bayard clutched to his chest. Suddenly something grabbed the back of his collar, forcing him to a halt. Picking him up like a scruffed cat, Hunk hauled him back up into the tunnel.

"Pidge has it," he yelled at Lance, pointing to the small figure launching herself off the top of a mining drill to plunge down amid the Galra pursuers, her bayard flashing with a bright whipcord ribbon of deadly green. "We've got the guns, remember? We need to cover them from up here!"

"Right," Lance said, remembering his bayard, and raised it up to sight down the barrel.

At this distance the individual Galra looked no bigger than his finger, but all the extra training Coran had been forcing on him paid off; he was able to knock them down one by one like far-away bowling pins, careful to shoot wide of Pidge as she darted through the group. At his side Hunk was sending off volley after volley, blowing huge holes in the Galra formation. Lance wondered if he'd been doing his own training with Coran. His chest swelled with pride as he imagined how cool they must look, a dynamic duo laying down cover fire side-by-side.

The miners climbing up to them reached the mouth of the tunnel with random cheers, and Lance and Hunk started waving and shouting at them to send them down it towards the safe exit at the far end. 

"Lance?" Shiro said over the comms just after the last miner scrambled off down the tunnel. "Status report?"

"Voltron's Angels here reporting total success," Lance answered, grinning at Hunk, and mimed blowing smoke from the barrel of his bayard. "All the miners are on their way down the tunnel."

There was a moment's pause before Shiro responded; Lance's memory could supply him with the sigh. "Everyone, regroup and fall back into the tunnel. Hunk will bring down the tunnel entrance, and we'll get the miners all the way to safety before we come back with the lions." He paused. "And Lance, please don't try to reference historical classics. It's not your style."

Still grinning, Lance raised his hand for a high-five. Hunk, chuckling and shaking his head, obliged.


	9. unlucky in love

Even if he did count all the chicks with attractiveness-tanking antisocial habits, Lance would _still_ consider this one the hottest alien girl he'd ever met. They were sitting on her family's roof, looking up at a brilliant display of stars, and it was getting just cool enough to encourage her to cuddle up against Lance for warmth.

Actually, Lance was doing most of the cuddling for warmth, since she was covered with a pelt of the finest, silkiest fur he'd ever had the honor to touch, but she was definitely cuddling back. They'd been holding hands all evening, she'd invited him to dinner with her parents, and Lance was certain that if he leaned just a little bit closer he'd be able to get away with a quick kiss.

Which was, of course, the moment his helmet, sitting on the roof beside him, lit up. "Lance, status report."

"Great," Lance answered, trying not to let his frustration spill over and sour the mood. "It's going great. You know, I think we could switch to checking in once every hour, actually."

"Nope," Shiro said. "Check in every twenty minutes, as planned. You know I'm requiring that from everyone tonight-"

"For once," Lance muttered under his breath. The girl tightened her arm reassuringly around his shoulders.

"-since we don't know exactly when the Galra are going to move into the system. I need you ready to move out at a moment's notice."

Sighing, Lance set his helmet down and turned to the girl, who wrinkled her adorable upturned nose at him and looked at him with huge, liquid black eyes. "Sorry about that," he told her, and she giggled and shrugged, resting her head on his shoulder.

After a few minutes of relaxing, the mood had come back again, and Lance looked down into those dark eyes again and started to lean close for that kiss. She tilted her head to receive it, a deep purr throbbing in her chest.

And Lance's helmet went off again. "Paladins, the Galra fleet is approaching the system," Allura said. "I need you in the lions now."

Cursing under his breath, Lance scrambled to his feet, wobbled on the steep slant of the roof, and accepted the girl's hand gratefully as she stood and steadied him. "Sorry, I'm so sorry, I've gotta go," he told her, scrambling back in through her window and stuffing his helmet on. "Can I see you again? Later?"

"Of course," she purred, and reached out, caught the back of his head, and tugged him in for a quick, chaste kiss. She pulled away before he could try and push it any farther. "More, later."

For a moment Lance's head spun, and then he took a deep breath and stepped regretfully back. "Later," he promised, and turned, bolting down the stairs and tumbling out the door on his way to the Blue Lion.

"The information we were given was correct about the Galra's numbers and trajectory," Allura said as he scrambled inside the Blue Lion. "The minefield is in place, and you should be able to draw them into it easily."

"Let's take out these Galra and come right back," Lance said, fastening his harness and launching into the air with a single smooth bound. "I have a hot girl waiting for me down there."

"You're sure she's not involved with any alien brothels?" Pidge asked.

"It was a jewelry shop!"

"Ah, Lance, you might want to know," Coran broke in. "Her body chemistry is very different from yours. I've run some analyses, and while you should be fine with casual contact, keep in mind that her bodily fluids are likely to be toxic to you, and yours to her."

Lance, who had been anticipating 'more, later' with a keeness that seemed to consume his whole body, let his head fall back against his chair and groaned.


	10. princess number two

They'd had Galra invaders in the castle twice before, and after the first two times Lance had really, really been hoping that there wouldn't be a third.

At least this time they'd been more prepared; Pidge and Hunk had designed locking systems that would keep the Galra out of the most sensitive areas of the ship for at least a little while, now that they'd been triggered, and Allura assured them that she'd set up a lock screen for all the bridge systems that could only be bypassed with the right code. Neither of those safeguards kept them out of the rest of the ship, though, and Lance had spent a couple hours now darting from one room to the next, dodging the Galra squads patrolling up and down the corridors. It was small comfort that the others were all doing the same.

"Remember," Shiro said over the comms, keeping his voice quiet, "I don't want anyone trying to engage a squad on their own. Once we regroup, we can start picking them off, but I don't want any of you to tip them off to your location and get pinned down."

"Where are we supposed to regroup?" Hunk asked, his voice high with anxiety that he couldn't force down. "Every time we've tried, we've had to scatter before we can get there. I can't think of anyplace else we can all get to, can you guys?"

"The training room," Keith suggested. "If one of us gets there before the rest, we can trigger the gladiators and keep the area clear for the others."

"Good plan," Shiro said. "Lance, status report?"

"That's the third time you've asked that," Lance said suspiciously, glancing around a corner and then scrambling down the empty corridor. "You do this all the time. Why are you always asking me for status reports, and not anyone else?"

"Because yours are always the most interesting," Shiro said. "Status report?"

There was an open gallery ahead that had once been some kind of formal meeting area, and he was on the balcony level. On the level below, a bunch of Galra soldiers were clustered together near the door directly beneath him. None of them were looking up, and Lance dared to lean over the balcony to spy on them. They were trying to bring something through that door; he leaned farther, craning his neck for a good look.

"I'm in the gallery hall, second level, and there's a bunch of Galra soldiers on the first level," he said. "They're trying to bring something in. They don't even have sentries up here, so I'm fine-"

The word turned into a yelp as he tumbled forward, overbalancing, and fell yelling and flailing to smash down head-first onto the hard floor below. If he hadn't been wearing his armor, the landing would have cracked his skull like an egg. Even with the helmet on, it was a tooth-rattling impact, and there were spots of light and darkness dancing in front of his vision when he opened his eyes.

Oh, and there was also an ugly Galra face snarling down at him.

"Hi," Lance squeaked.

Things got very busy and very confusing for a little while. There was shouting, both inside and outside of his helmet, and jostling, and a bit of pain, and then even more shouting and yelling and a small explosion as Keith, showing up to the rescue, made short work of whatever the oversized thing was that the Galra had been trying to shove through the gallery door. Then he picked Lance up and threw him over his shoulder, driving all the air out of Lance's lungs, and headed off through the castle.

"I'm on the bridge," Pidge said abruptly into Lance's ear, the first intelligible thing that he'd heard from his helmet comm in a while. He wasn't sure if that was due to the state of his helmet, or the state of his head. "Princess Number One is secure."

"Princess Two is secure," Keith's voice said. "I'm on my way."

It took Lance several seconds of bewilderment to figure out how Keith's voice could be sounding in his ear when his head was level with Keith's armored ass. Then he flailed indignantly, and Keith stumbled and nearly dropped him, catching him with a grunt.

"Princess Two?!"

"You're the less pretty one," Hunk said over the comms. "Uh, sorry."

Lance glared for a moment at Keith's upside-down butt, but he couldn't really argue the point. He sighed and sagged in Keith's grip. "You guys are jerks."

"And you're alive and not stuck in the middle of a bunch of Galra soldiers, so suck it up," Keith told him.

A thought occurred to Lance, and he scrabbled against Keith's back until he could push himself up almost horizontal with his elbows. "You know what this means, right?"

"What?" Keith asked.

Lance grinned loopily at the empty corridor behind them. "I totally get a tiara."


End file.
